A Good Cigar Is A Smoke

Speranza

1905

"A Woman Is Only A Woman But A Good Cigar Is A Smoke" w. Harry B. Smith m. Victor Herbert.  

 

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In "Logic and Conversation", Grice provides two examples of tautologies, which can be combined in a dialogue:

 

A: What is then your opinion of the policy undertaken by Baroness Thatcher during the South Atlantic conflict:

B: (a) Women are women.

--- (b) War is war.

 

In any case, this is a title of a song of 1905: "A woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke". The words by Harry B. Smith, the music by Victor Herbert. It may endure some Griceian analysis. I would suggest that the emphasis should be on the second conjunct after "but" ("&" in logical form, cfr. Grice, "She was poor BUT honest") -- and it may do to analyse the Harean phrastic analysis of "good" -- as it applies to 'cigar': it may turn out that, as per Aristotle's categories, a good cigar IZZ not a smoke, but HAZZ it.